


Waterloo (Knowing My Fate Is To Be With You)

by InsertSthMeaningful



Category: X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Adopted Children, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Author Is Sleep Deprived, BAMF!Raven, Children, Destique, F/F, Femslash, Fluff, How Do I Tag This, i guess?, they're canon!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-07
Updated: 2020-03-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:47:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,751
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23054185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InsertSthMeaningful/pseuds/InsertSthMeaningful
Summary: From the very first time Raven meets Irene, she is drawn to the woman. However, it takes her a lifetime and more to really believe in the fulfilled existence they can lead together.
Relationships: Irene Adler & Rogue (X-Men), Irene Adler (X-Men)/Raven | Mystique, Raven | Mystique & Kurt Wagner, Raven | Mystique & Rogue
Comments: 9
Kudos: 22
Collections: X-Men Rare Pairs 2020





	Waterloo (Knowing My Fate Is To Be With You)

**Author's Note:**

  * In response to a prompt by [flightinflame](https://archiveofourown.org/users/flightinflame/pseuds/flightinflame) in the [xmenrarepairs20](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/xmenrarepairs20) collection. 



> **Prompt:**
> 
> Irene is certain from the first moment she meets Raven that they belong together, getting visions of them with their future children, and knowing this is where she belongs. Raven is a bit more cautious. 
> 
> Thank you for this prompt, Jasp! I just HAD to. Everything's a bit of a trainwreck because I'm sleep-deprived and excellent at procrastination, but I hope you still enjoy reading it!  
> Title inspired by, you guessed it, [ABBA's Waterloo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sj_9CiNkkn4). Still one of the best songs in existence. I kinda merged comic!Raven and movie!Raven to make her a bit more badass but also more receptive to Nightcrawler being her son. Same with canon, which obviously doesn't exactly correspond to either the comics or the movies. And I have no idea about how accurate my description of 18th-century manners are (not very, probably xD).

Mystique met Irene over tea.

It was her favourite kind. A strong, healthy brew, tamed with a drop of cream and refined with three cubes of rock sugar. She usually consumed it every Wednesday afternoon at exactly four o’clock in her favourite London tea house - and never in her true form, of course, but in her favourite male persona, Eric Raven. Just as she was doing on that one fateful day in August.

The late-summer heat had once again turned London into the stinking mess of a city it became when there was no rain to wash away the remnants of the everyday lives of millions of its residents, and Mystique _once again_ asked herself why she chose to stick around rather than return to the continent, to Austria, like she should have done months ago. Her gloved fingers were twitching, caressing the delicate china of the teacup in front of her. It was a fine piece of work. White, shiny, with a dusting of almost microscopic peach blossoms and a gold-plated rim and handle. She sighed, pulling her handkerchief over her mouth to hide the oh-so unwelcome expression of feeling. Of boredom.

A young lady with smoked glasses was smiling at her from two tables over.

Who by God wore smoked glasses inside?

Mystique chose not to smile back, for it would be inappropriate of a man of her age and standing to do so. Instead, she subtly inclined her head. _I acknowledge your presence._

The woman’s smile only grew, until it was almost a grin. Other patrons had noticed already and were shying away, disgusted by the open exhibition of emotion. Mystique frowned, ever-so inconspicuously looked left, then right to see if not another man than herself had captured the lady’s eye. However, she found no one but herself meriting the attention. _Oh dear._

As quickly as her devotion to tea allowed it, she finished hers, then paid and took her hat. When she descended the stairs to the street outside, she caught a glimpse of honey-blonde hair in a mirror. Someone was following her.

She thought that she might just have an idea about who it was.

And indeed, after she had stepped out into hustle and bustle of the busy London street and gone a few paces, there was a tug at her sleeve, and then the woman from before slid her arm into hers and spoke, with a voice like smoked honey, “The weather today is a delight, isn’t it?”

Mystique did what English manners demanded. She lied. “Yes, it is indeed formidable, is it not?”

All the response she got was a chuckle until they had left the more crowded part of the street behind. Apparently, the woman was aiming for the steel gates guarding the entrance of Hyde Park. Birds were chirping in the trees of which the leaves presented a muddy green quite atypical for the otherwise so rich and deep English summer, and Fortuna must have smiled on them then, for there were few other pedestrians out and about on the wide lanes of the snippet of nature in London’s very midst. No witnesses to the strange behaviour that Mystique knew would inevitably follow this confrontation, be it of hostile or cordial nature.

With a steady voice radiating enormous amounts of self-confidence, the lady said, “You are indeed a fine leman to spend the rest of my life with, my dear. Oh, what impressive countenance you have even in the face of the unknown.”

Now, that was quite enough. Mystique, one head taller in her manly disguise, looked over and into the lenses of the woman’s sunglasses, disengaging their arms as she did so. “Beg your pardon? I do not believe that we have ever met before.”

“Oh, no. But we have now. Is that not enough for you, dear lady?” A smile, slim, like a tendril of fog, passed over the woman’s face. And really, had it not been for the rather impolite circumstances of their meeting, Mystique would have gladly engaged with her, for her skin was fair - not like those of all the haughty countesses she had had to endure in her career, but thousand times more refined - and her lips were lush and her figure of quite amiable physiognomy, the likes of which she had never encountered before in another woman of mental capacities so obviously similar to her own.

Then, like a by a thunderbolt, she was struck down by the last word the woman’s mouth had uttered.

“How- Why would you address me in such a manner, woman?” Oh, how her fingers itched to close around the lady’s throat, to hold tight and squeeze her secret to death together with the foolish woman herself. If only the word would reveal itself to have been nothing but a slight misstep of sanity…

Alas, it seemed destined not to be. “Because I know who you really are. I know of your true self, _Lady Raven Darkhölme._ ”

Mystique had the knife she carried under her sleeve day and night unsheathed in the mere blink of an eye, and as she stabbed down, she was certain this new problem would be resolved as fast as it had presented itself to her.

However, as it was, her blade never met flesh, didn’t even draw one drop of blood.

Indeed, the woman had simply taken a step back, let the blow go by as though she knew it was coming and was now smiling just as pleasantly as before, hands folded amiably in front of her chest. “You see, my dear. I know who you are, I know who you will be, what you will do. For I am just like you.”

It was like being doused in cold water, the shock of knowing that her deepest secret had just been uncovered in but a few words, and by a mere stranger no less. However, Mystique could not help feeling curiosity curl in the back of her head. “And how, pray tell, would you describe our shared nature?”

“You, Lady Darkhölme,” the woman said, and fondness beyond Mystique’s comprehension painted her features soft, “are what the lore of myths and the fantastical designate as a shapeshifter, whereas I, Irene Adler – how impolite of me, I haven’t even presented myself to you by name yet – possess the power of foresight.”

“This is how you found me out,” Mystique couldn’t help gasping out. In her innermost being, something she shifted.

She was not alone.

“So it is.” Ms Alder smiled widely, showing a row of pearly white teeth. “I may be blind – hence my smoked glasses, to prevent the world from seeing the malady clouding my eyes – but I have seen much already. I know things, and I navigate the world with the help of this knowledge.”

Without her conscious doing, Mystique felt her scales rustle, felt their need to bare themselves to the only other human being on this dire planet Earth who could possibly understand her. The need to drag this mysterious and yet so familiar stranger to a hidden place, where they could truly _see_ each other, intensified. “What _do_ you know?”

“I have seen us - _together_. We were always fated to be lovers. I see our people, becoming more numerous by the minute. Right now, there are dozens of us being born all across the globe. And-” There, it was as though she hesitated, caught in fearful uncertainty- “I see our very own children.”

Mystique got to appreciate Destiny even more deeply over instant coffee.

It had been five days now since the government’s hounds had cornered them in their safehouse up by the Canadian border. The stock of MREs Mystique had squirrelled away years ago was dwindling, their supply of potable water had been reduced to a few cups’ worths, and there had never been much firewood to begin with. In short, they were running low on everything - including time to act.

To be honest, Mystique wouldn’t have minded that much if she had been alone. Even if it had only been Destiny with her, she could have readily embraced death and its freedom, because she would have done so in the arms of the truest love she had ever had the fortune to encounter. However, as it was, they had company in their siege: Little Anne Marie, who they had picked up only weeks before they had been entrenched in that badly-lit log cabin, in the middle of the Canadian nowhere, and all with winter hot (or rather cold) on their heels.

Sighing, Mystique bent over the counter, listening to the wind howl around the corners of their cage like a demon on the loose. At her back, the meagre warmth of the cast-iron stove’s fire curled, and the soft voice of her wife and the Southern accent of the nine-year-old girl were playing a game of constant back and forth. There was a pot of instant coffee they had unearthed from the back of a kitchen cabinet brewing on the cooktop. It would have been cosy, almost picturesque, their stay in their little cottage in the forest, had it not been for the snipers Mystique knew were just aching to put a bullet through their heads as soon as they set foot outside.

“What do you see?” she finally rasped out and turned to Destiny, who had Anne Marie on her lap and was playing a game of _I spy with my little eye…_ with her.

Even with her face obscured behind her glinting brass mask, from the mere tilt of her head, she could feel Destiny’s mock-reproachful expression directed towards her. “Raven. You know I can’t tell you, or I’ll spoil the game! You have to guess for yourself.”

Ignoring Anne Marie’s gleeful giggle, Mystique put her hands on her hips and grimaced. “Love, you _know_ that’s not what I was talking about. Do you see any hope?”

“All around us, there is hope. In the woodworm chrysalises buried between the parquet planks, in the frozen buds under the bark of the trees outside, and most of all in our three little hearts.”

At that, Anne Marie looked at Destiny with wide eyes, entranced by the simplistic beauty of the woman’s words.

Now, one might have thought Destiny was talking nothing but gibberish. Of course, this was everything but the case. Over the years and decades they had spent together, Mystique had learned to decipher the woman’s often more than enigmatic words – how else could she have done her Chosen Name justice? - and knew how to wring the meaning, the predictions from them.

Now, she shot the trapdoor leading to the cellar a suspicious look. “Are you sure? I already checked every crevice and corner down there for an escape route.”

“What escabe ruth?” Anne Marie perked up, but Destiny seized her by the shoulders, lifted her mask a teeny bit and began blowing raspberries onto the girl’s soft neck that she squealed and giggled and squirmed. The skin of her lips withered and wilted as she did so, but Destiny didn’t seem to mind.

Then, with their protegee safely distracted in her arms, Mystique’s wife looked up and said, “I’m sure.”

Frowning, Mystique took two metal cups from the sink and brought them over to the stove to fill them with the coffee, which was of a bleak, muddy brown, brew resembling the water of the Mississippi River after a harsh day of rain. “And why couldn’t you have told me earlier? We’ve barely stocked enough to survive a few more days of digging, let alone the trek to the next settlement without US moles around every corner.”

“Oh, as always, you think too far, my darling,” Destiny muttered, carding through Anne Marie’s locks of auburn hair, carefully rearranging the white streak so it ran down over the still giggling girl’s eye. “Believe you me when I say that Mother Fate has more in store for us than to die here like dogs.”

Mystique didn’t plead for further explanation after that. Instead, she left her cup of instant coffee up in the kitchen with Irene and Anna Marie and went to inspect the cellar’s walls again.

After carefully picking her way through the booby traps she had herself laid out in the dark, damp room, she came to the wall which she knew lay closest to the treeline. Gingerly, she placed her ear against the wall of dirt barely held back by a dozen wooden planks.

In the distance, she thought she could hear the faintest scratching.

“Who feels up to a game of hide-and-seek?” she announced when she stalked back into the kitchen to find Anna Marie helping Destiny pile their last supplies into their backpacks. The cups of instant coffee stood on the stove, unfinished, with a sip of canned milk heating up in a pan beside them.

“I’m all game for it,” Destiny chirped, most probably hiding a wide grin behind her mask as she looked over at Anna Marie. “And you, little ladybug? But we still need to give you your hot chocolate first.”

Of course, the child shrieked in delight, and deep inside Mystique, something warm and heavy stirred as she watched the woman she loved pour the steaming milk into a mug, add their last precious crumbs of chocolate powder and hand it to the girl who, Mystique found, had dug herself a nook in her heart right beside Irene. Suddenly, everything seemed a child’s play: With their escape plan now fully worked out in her mind ( _hide in the vicinity of the trapdoor; wait until the government agents have burrowed down into the cellar and been taken out by the booby traps; finish the last ones left while sending Destiny and the girl ahead so they can use the confusion of the soldiers who had stayed outside to slip away, maybe even secure a getaway car; fight her way out of the cabin and through to her loved ones_ ), Mystique could finally appreciate the service Destiny was doing Anna Marie by pretending it was all a game, not the deadly hunt which it really was.

The instant coffee tasted bitter on her tongue, only sweetened by the last kiss she gave Destiny before they hid away in a closet under the kitchen counter, cramped together like anchovies in a tin can.

Then, after three hours of breathless wait, everything went very fast. And, fortunately for them, according to plan.

Afterwards, when Mystique tried to distract Anna Marie from the scenes she had witnessed, all the while nursing a few cracked ribs and a bleeding hand, she couldn’t help glancing over to Destiny every now and then. The woman drove their military truck away from the house of horror in which they had passed almost a whole week, her grip steady on the steering wheel, unseeing eyes turned ahead into the sheets of ice and snow the wind dragged in front of their headlights. To their unsuspecting oncoming traffic, she might have appeared almost nonchalant.

Slowly, the realization came. Those stirrings Mystique had felt in the cabin, the ones deep in her belly which were still there, had not only been love and deep fondness for Anna Marie and her wife. It had been an overall sense of acceptance and serenity.

To her, these people were now her family. She would protect them with her life if this was the price for their well-being. And she knew that Destiny would do just the same.

In the end, Raven realised Irene had been right all along over a not-yet-existent glass of champagne.

The sun was going down and had set the sky over the X-Mansion’s grounds ablaze with shades of mauve and gold. Indeed, it had been a fine day for the wedding of Rogue of the Sisterhood and Gambit of the X-Men.

Now, it was time to party and toast to the prosperous future of the newly-weds who had chosen to make a fast retreat to their chamber for, well, private celebrations. Raven sighed and rolled her eyes while stirring her cocktail with the ridiculous paper parasol it came with. The music was too loud, the people didn’t know to keep their elbows and hands to themselves, and nowhere a quiet place could be found. Gosh, but she was getting _old_.

 _We are all ageing, dear Mrs Adler-Darkhölme_ , spoke the voice of the Professor in her head, and after a bit of looking around, she spotted him over at the bar, on his lap Magneto in full costume whose tired eyes betrayed just how dead to the world he was - and to the wedding celebrations going on around him, too. _At least_ you _don’t look the part._

 _Benefits of my re-generational mutation, as Beast would so adequately put it_ , Raven sent back, then had to break their connection because someone decided to tackle her in a hug from behind and almost set off her automatic fight-or-flight response.

“Oh, Kurt,” she sighed when the culprit bamfed into view before her. “It’s you. Enjoying yourself, Liebling?”

The endearment still felt strange rolling off her tongue, even after so many years, but Magneto had taken it upon herself to teach her some morsels of German when he had learned that Nightcrawler was her son.

“Ja, Mama,” her offspring answered, white teeth showing behind a grin so similar to hers.

She couldn’t help smiling back, she just couldn’t. Was it her fault that having a second child made her feel all bubbly and warm inside? Certainly not. “Well, good. I know you’ll probably be off again in a min' to catch Logan and Ororo on the dancefloor, but make sure you don’t drink too much, yes? We both know how that played out last time.”

“Ja, Mama,” he repeated, grin widening even though it should have been anatomically impossible. She had to admit he looked dashing in his tuxedo, with the fly she had tied for him just a few hours ago. “If you are looking for Mum, she is over by ze entrance doors!” And that said, he disappeared in a puff of smoke and left only the shale smell of sulphur and rose water behind.

Shaking her head, she took his advice and carved herself a way between the wedding guests until she caught sight of Irene casually leaning in the door frame of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, staring ruefully at the empty champagne flute in her hand.

At Raven approaching and flinging an arm around her hips, she raised her head and grinned. The shimmer of the fairy lights strung into the trees and around the posts of the veranda by Xavier’s students reflected off her glasses’ smoked lenses. “Why hello there, my beautiful Raven. I’ve got something to tell you.”

“Hmm,” Raven remarked intelligibly as she was pulled into a kiss, and then another one, and another one, until she had to lay a hand against Irene’s bosom ( _Hmm_ indeed) to keep her from kissing the living daylights out of her right then and there. “And what would that be, my gorgeous Irene?”

“I have foreseen-” Irene made a wave-y motion with her hands that was probably meant to look mysterious but only made her look more endearing- “that _you_ , Mrs Raven Adler-Darkhölme, have _just_ decided to get me another glass of that wicked champagne.”

“Oh have I? That’s an abuse of your mutant power, Irene,” Raven quipped back and pulled her wife closer once more.

Before she could smooch her senseless, though, Irene perked up and whispered, “Wait! A probable path has just become a certainty. Come on, dance with me!”

Bewildered as she was, Raven could only follow as Irene pulled her away from the entrance and onto the wooden planks laid out on the lawn to form a rough dancefloor. ABBA’s Waterloo had just started playing loudly from the speakers, and couples of students and teachers were jiving enthusiastically to the beats.

_And I have met my destiny in quite a similar way_

The smell of sweat and perfume hanging in the air made Raven feel light-headed, and the heat from all the bodies pressed so closely did nothing to help. Fortunately for her, Irene had always known how to lead perfectly.

_Waterloo; couldn’t escape if I wanted to_

_Waterloo; knowing my fate is to be with you_

Quite suddenly, Raven understood why Irene had wanted them to dance just then, just there. It was indeed a perfect song.

Leaning in closely, Irene’s lips slid over her cheek, then the shell of her ear. Only barely did Raven suppress a shiver at that.

“Finally believe me now?”

Though it had been more than a century already, and they had lived and died what felt like a thousand times, Raven understood the meaning behind Irene’s words. That hot English summer day when they had met swam back into the spotlight of her memory.

“ _I believe you when you tell me that our kind is meant to inherit the Earth,” Raven Darkhölme spoke and gazed at the woman in suspicion. “And I might even believe that we can become lovers, and will remain so for a very long time. What I cannot and will not accept, however, is your blatant assumption that one day, our union will be lucky enough to bear children of our own, and happy ones at that.”_

“ _Then don’t believe me.” Irene Adler’s smile didn’t waver as she took Mystique’s hand and brought them to her lips, placing a feathery soft kiss on them. “But know that one day, you will. And that this is not a mere prediction of probability, but one of certainty.”_

“Oh, Irene...” She trailed off after that, lost her train of thought for a minute because of the heat in her belly, on her cheeks, all over her body. When she shook out of the daze, Irene was still smiling patiently, body undulating to the rhythm of the music as though she had never known any different in life. “More now than ever.”

Irene tossed her head back at that and laughed loud and heartily, and when she leaned back in, Raven surged forward to claim her lips, until they were kissing in the very midst of the dance floor, the crowd flowing and ebbing around them as time had done from the very moment they had met: steadily, erratically, with the secret knowledge that whatever happened, neither destiny nor doubt would ever be able to separate them.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, I checked myself if you could dance Jive to Waterloo *cut to me hopping around in my bedroom while ABBA plays on my laptop*


End file.
